Swatting isn't always a prank

Swatting might seem like an innocent prank. It can have very real consequences.

Swatting was a term I remember first learning about several years ago. At the time, I was hoping that it was just a passing fad and wouldn’t take. But several recent swatting events have led to lethal consequences.

Swatting is when a person calls the police to report a “crime” as either you or claiming that they have seen a crime committed by you. The goal is get law enforcement to use lethal force. Erick himself suffered from this cruel practice, only being saved by his high profile and relationship with the local sheriff.

Others who have experienced swatting have not been as lucky. A man in Georgia was killed by police when an ex-wife swatted him in the middle of the night. A quick Google search revealed at least three instances with the last three days of various swatting cases.

The biggest case of swatting, one that ended with a man dead and the man who made the call facing felony false alarm charges, occurred at the end of last year. A man in California called police in Kansas to report a crime committed by a man after an argument during an online gaming session.

With the Internet and anonymous phone calls making it easier than ever to hide, it seems inevitable that swatting calls will continue to plague our nation. Thankfully, in some cases the person initiating the swatting is caught and charged with a crime. Like gun laws, those caught must be punished to the full extent allowed by law. That may be the only deterrent to those thinking about committing this crime in the future.

This isn't really using bigger government, it's just enforcing the Rule of Law. Swatting is the ultimate version of "false arrest" and the person initating the "false arrest" should be charged with not only the crime of "false arrest" and penalized as an officer would be for the resulting "arrest" and any injuries caused, they should also be forced to pay the entire cost incurred by the police force responding - salaries, equipment wear & tear, repair costs of any property damaged as a result; and compensation to the "falsely arrested" individual in the sum of $1,000,000 [or whatever assets the swatter might have]. If the swatting act resulted in the death of anyone, the charge would have to be elevated to malice murder, including the availability of capital punishment. You'd only have to imprison for life without possibility of parole or even justbankrupt a few of these idiots before instances would stop.

WillYams

May 21

Or maybe bigger government isn't the answer. I'm amazed at how many "conservatives" go to is bigger government.

Spot on, Dave. My mentor, a conservative professor, was asked to resign because he agreed to debate gay activists who were touring college campuses. It was a civil debate, and the activists said it was their best of the tour, but people had warned my friend that there would be retaliation from the university for just daring to even imply there was an opposing view at the school. The dean, who was gay, called him in and demanded that he resign. My friend was tenured, and they couldn't force him out. This happens all the time.

Dave_Oedel

May 20

streiff hater, you're missing that the hostile environment for conservatives in higher education has effectively "killed" many careers. You don't have the perspective that I have watching my right-leaning law professor colleagues across the country struggle against huge odds. The law schools are stacked against any on the right. It is something like 9 to 1, or worse. You have deans like the one at CUNY feeling totally comfortable blessing an obviously inappropriate affront to conservative speech, basically saying to go ahead and kill that speech act. If she can do that publicly, imagine what it's like living relatively privately with her and her overwhelmingly leftist faculty at CUNY on a day to day basis if you were a conservative at CUNY. Slow, strangling death in the workplace would seem plausible. Not a pretty sight. And this is going on at many, many law schools nationwide. There is something approaching zero tolerance for conservative views in these schools. I do have perspective, and it should be disturbing to you too. In a democracy, speech is life. That is why the first amendment is first, before the second amendment.